June 29, 2000

STATE OF THE ART

Napster
Rocks
The Web

By PETER H. LEWIS

Stuart Goldenberg

he Internet transformed the world
by linking computer networks. The
World Wide Web transformed the
Internet by making it easy to link files on
those computers.

Now another major transformation is
occurring, in the form of programs like
Napster and Gnutella. These programs,
best known for allowing college students
to swap music files, make it easy to link
one computer directly to another for the
purpose of transferring files anonymously. In the case of Gnutella and similar
services like Freenet, CuteMX, JungleMonkey and Hotline, central computers
are bypassed altogether.

And that, to paraphrase Elvis Presley,
has the Web all shook up. By enabling millions of computer users to search for files
and transfer them from one desktop computer to another, instead of the current
model in which files are typically stored
on and retrieved from a central Internet
computer called a server, the balance of
power shifts from the commercial interests that now dominate the Internet to the
individual.

Napster is a good place to start to understand how these new "peer to peer"
services differ from the majority of Internet sites today because it is relatively
simple, is limited to MP3 music files and
is the most consumer-friendly of the services. A similar service for Macintosh
computers is Macster (www.macster.com). Gnutella, Hotline and Freenet are
a bit more complicated and are still used
mainly by techies.

Napster is the new Elvis of the Internet, the rebel that rocks the establishment because of its wild popularity
among young people and its whiff of dangerousness. According to Napster, hundreds of thousands of people are signing
up every day on www.napster.com, adding to the 14 million who have already
registered to use it. The company acknowledges that many of these users are
sharing copyrighted music, mainly digital MP3 music files that have been copied
from commercial audio CD's. The program can, of course, be used in a completely legal fashion by people trading uncopyrighted music files, perhaps including your as-yet undiscovered garage
band or your latest rap compositions. The
tool itself is not intrinsically illegal.

The music industry sees Napster as the
devil in disguise. It fears that when CD-quality songs are free for the taking over
the Internet, people will be less willing to
pay $15 or more for a CD in a store.

So the
Recording Industry Association of America and major record companies are suing Napster, seeking to shut it down.

Napster, which is based in San Mateo,
Calif., was still very much in business on
a recent afternoon. Eddie Kessler, Napster's vice president of engineering,
checked the logs and said there were
more than 450,000 people connected to
Napster's servers at that moment, sharing millions of song files.

What were these people doing? Probably the same thing I was, looking for
songs to add to the collection on my hard
disk. I went looking for "Jailhouse Rock,"
and within five minutes it was on my
computer. My cost? Zero. Revenue to Elvis's estate and to the record company? Zero. Illegal? Napster says no.
But ask a copyright lawyer, and the
answer is most likely to be yes.

Napster makes it easy for people
to violate copyright laws. Most of the
traffic is in music that one would otherwise have to buy in the stores.

It works like this: You download
the Napster client program to your
Windows computer from Napster's
Web site. (Macintosh, Linux and other versions are expected soon.) Once
the software is installed, and after
you promise not to violate any copyright laws, you register a screen
name and designate which files on
your computer you want to share
with others. Typically these are your
MP3 files. You are not required to
share your files, but Napster is based
on community sharing, and most
people give as well as take.

Making a revolution,
one MP3 music file at
a time.

Clicking on the Napster icon connects you to one of Napster's server
computers. The servers do not store
any files. They merely act as matchmakers. Type in a search query for
"Elvis," and in seconds you see a list
of the first 100 Elvis Presley (and
some Elvis Costello) tunes being offered by all currently connected
Napster users. For lesser known artists, only a handful of tunes may
show up.

Transferring a file from someone
else's computer is as simple as clicking on a bar that says "Get Selected
Songs." At that point, Napster enables a seamless Internet connection
between your computer and the one
containing the file you want. Seconds,
minutes or hours later, depending on
the speed of the Internet connections
on both ends of the exchange, the file
pops into your computer.

The song can then be played
through computer speakers, transferred to an audio CD with a CD-R
drive, or -- with the new digital audio
receivers that are soon to come to
market -- played through a home
stereo system. It can also be left in
the shared-music folder so other
Napster users can copy it from you.

Napster's transfer screen shows
both the files arriving at your computer, and the files that other people
are siphoning from your hard disk.
Are you lonesome tonight? With the
click of another button, you can enter
a public chat session with other Napster users on your server -- up to
about 6,000 people per server -- or
send an instant message to anyone
connected to Napster at the time.

There is a reason Napster is so
popular among college students, besides the fact that many of them are
broke and do not object to getting
music for free. A typical three-minute song file is more than 3
megabytes in size, or more than 25
million bits (there are 8 bits to the
byte). A cable modem or D.S.L. modem that transfers several million
bits per second is clearly preferable
to a dial-up modem that is limited to
14,400, 28,800 or even 53,000 bits per
second. Napster would not be nearly
as popular if college students did not
have easy access to 10-megabit (10
million bits per second) Ethernet
connections in their dormitory
rooms and libraries.

Napster makes it easy to search
not only by the name of the artist or
the song title, but also by such important variables as bit rate, connection
speed and ping rate.

Bit rate refers to the sampling
quality of the digital copy; in general, the higher the bit rate, the more
closely the recording is to the original. A bit rate of 128 or higher is, for
most listeners, virtually equivalent
to audio CD quality. But the higher
the bit rate, the larger the file.

File transfers take forever if you
are downloading to or uploading
from someone who is using the
equivalent of a hand-cranked modem. Napster allows people to restrict their music searches to computers that have high-speed connections. Listing your connection speed
is voluntary, and some people with
fast connections may lie because
they do not want everyone to be copying their music files. The ping rate
indicates the time it takes, in milliseconds, to send a test signal (the
ping) to the target computer and to
get a reply (the pong). A double-digit
ping rate is good.

Gnutella (gnutella.wego.com) also
allows the sharing of copyrighted
music files, but its impact is likely to
be felt much more broadly once the
software is made easier to use. Unlike Napster, Gnutella bypasses a
server completely and is designed to
allow individuals to send and receive
all kinds of files without going
through a central computer. Music,
movies, TV shows, pictures, novels,
software -- anything that can be digitized can now be stored and shared
with other computers without going
through a giant portal or central file
server.

Viewed one way, Gnutella is a
hammer that can break censorship
on a global level because once a file
is in circulation, the only ways to contain it are to shut down the Internet
or confiscate individual PC's. In other words, it would be nearly impossible. Viewed another way, Gnutella
and its siblings can also break copyrights and business models and law
enforcement in the digital realm.
The commercial software industry,
which says $12 billion was lost to
software pirates last year, has nightmares over the potential losses from
programs like Gnutella, Hotline
(www.bigredh.com), JungleMonkey
(www.junglemonkey.net) and
Freenet (freenet.sourceforge.net).
There is no pressure point or server
system that can stop the hemorrhaging, as the recording industry association is attempting to do by suing
Napster.

In the end, I deleted the downloaded Elvis files from my computer. It
simply did not seem fair to Elvis's
estate or his record company to enjoy his music without paying something for it. Indeed, Napster may
soon impose a subscription fee as a
way to compensate the record companies and artists whose music is being bootlegged.

But now that the technology exists
for millions of Web users to share
files easily, the genie is out of the bottle. Once again, the technology has
outpaced the laws, business models
and public discussion needed to cope
with it. The debate is just beginning.

State of the Art is published on Thursdays. Click here for a list of links to other columns in the series.

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